


ditto

by amandaskankovich



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 12:31:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7051621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amandaskankovich/pseuds/amandaskankovich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth is an actual ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ditto

**Author's Note:**

> Tw for csa and suicide. Just in case.

It would be bullshit to say she’d never been religious. Yeah, sure, the closest thing to a label of what she was now would be an atheist. Before she’d known just what she was (what she was apart of, not what, not a what) it had been hard to believe in anything but what was there before her. Cops see terrible things after all and her childhood had been…something they sealed in an envelope and locked in a room for the sake of her protection.

So God was not an easy thing. If anything she found the whole idea a bit childish. Too many times she’d seen it over and over again people using the idea of a loving Jesus to avoid having to deal with the fact that they were actual monsters.

It’s okay I diddled my five year old. Jesus forgives.

Anyway.

Her mother had dragged her to church every Sunday and one of the four items of jewelry she has in her possession is an old gold cross her grandmother had given her as a child. But ask her if she believes in God and she’d say…honestly? What difference did it make?

In her here and now what actual difference did it make if she said yes or no to that? But she supposed the answer was yes and no.

Yes when she flew in a plane.

No when she noticed a too dark mole on her shoulder blade. Team Science then. Cut it the fuck out.

Stepping in front of the train? Nope.

After?

*

She was supposed to stop.

The fact that she didn’t felt like a broken promise.

*

She looked at another one with her face grabbing her purse and walking away looking fucking terrified.

“Hey you bitch! That’s my fucking purse!”

*

What’s a ghost’s favorite dessert?

I scream.

What kind of mistake does a ghost make?

A boo boo.

Why are ghosts bad at telling lies?

Because you can see right through them.

*

She watches Sarah step into her life and she wonders how could anyone be that sad.

*

She sees it all. She sees them all: Kira, Helena, Rachel, Felix, Mark, Gracie, Cosima, Alison, Mika, Krystal, Kendall, Siobhan, Charlotte, Leekie, Vic, Delphine, Leda, Dyad, Castor, Paul. Sometimes she gets confused. Because time is no longer a thing for her without sleep, or food, or touch, it might as well just be one very long, very sad dream.

When Paul can see her for a second his eyes say sorry.

She says, “Save it.”

*

He doesn’t hang around. He fades all away in seconds.

Typical.

*

She watches Kira sleeping a few times. But there’s a night she sits up suddenly and Beth can swear she’s looking right at her.

So she keeps her distance after that. Time means nothing anymore but still…there’s some shit she cannot deal with.

*

Is there a joke about ghosts dreaming? She tries to think of one. All she can come up with are images of Casper the friendly ghost floating above his bed with a blanket draped over him. Why doesn’t the blanket fall to the floor? If he floats anyway why does Casper need a bed. Who the fuck came up with Casper anyway? A fun and wholesome comic strip about a dead 8 year old.

She doesn’t sleep. She doesn’t dream. So what she does instead is find a sister somewhere and stay up with her. There’s always at least one. She watches Allison clean her oven at 3 am. She watches Cosima blurry eyed in front of her computer at 4:30. She watches Sarah toss and turn and stare at her bedroom ceiling at 5am.

Helena almost always sleeps through the whole night.

*

But sometimes though she leaves them for a little while. She finds a quiet place to stand. She imagines herself fading away like Paul just for a little while. She looks down at her hands and can’t see them anymore. So she stops.

Sometimes from far away she hears a voice calling to her asking if she’s ready yet.

Telling her it’s okay.

But the voice sounds to her like too much forced calm.

Like her own when she’d be breathing in and out and terrified.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

And it hadn’t been in the end.

*

She thinks of herself sometimes in her lowest points like that thing that happens sometimes with a photocopier where the image of something last copied ends up faint on top of another image where it doesn’t belong. Her still being here long after she shouldn’t. But then she remembers the reality of her actual existence and she thinks maybe this is just the next stage of whatever made her up.

What do you call a ghost of a clone? The ghost of a clone it seems…redundant. Excessive. A copy of sorts of a copy of a copy. Then she thinks what she is now might be a closer idea of what people actually think of when the they think of clones. She is a faded copy image of Beth Child’s transported into a new form when the train hit. She is Beth. She is a new kind of Beth. She is Beth. A Beth that cannot be seen except maybe by her sister’s half awake child. Who can be touched by no one.

Other times she remembers Mika begging her not to leave her.

And she can say (unheard of course), “I didn’t.”


End file.
